Bookmark 2023

Expectational Hazard

Negative Space

Though this has been posted previously it reminded me of the current House of Representatives.

Expansion

Narrowing is happening everywhere. Disciplines of study look at smaller and smaller areas. Specialties in every field create distance from the big picture by the specific detail they study. People are often narrowing their personal group and guiding ideas. This is possibly a response to fear. Even when we know the news story in all its details, wars, shootings, disease, with every dramatic horror, the media swamps every outlet with endless discussion that generates more fear. We may know the primary characters in the drama, but never who is making money off it other than the media and the arms industry. The way it fits into a larger picture and how a broader understanding might lead to better solutions does not feed the machine, so we are trapped in our chairs, hidden from exposure lest we are somehow fingered as the enemy. The destruction industry is very powerful and is now turning attention to important government structures that though far from perfect have given us a framework to work with competing viewpoints. Facts are at war with alternative facts, our sophisticated brains drowning in simplifying contradictory symbols. Yet creating is still happening. Artists all over the world bring insight and the emotional significance of events. Gaining perspective is a task for images. Antagonisms are built from limiting the evidence, avoiding whatever shows how a different group sees things. We need to see more of how things are interconnected. I recently heard someone on the radio say that banning books was an effort to decrease empathy. Stories create context, allows others into the circumstances behind events. Stories about people different from the familiar group help us understand them better, sympathize with a specific situation and recognize an individual as another human being. Art creates a bridge to the minds of others. Expressed with feeling, the feeling connects people even when the content is unfamiliar. This strengthens the ability to see what matters instead of surface triggers aimed at manipulation. Anyone can train their visual, intuitive intelligence by looking at art. With so much now available on the internet, it couldn’t be easier and more urgent. John Dewey once wrote that propaganda was designed to close minds whereas education was designed to open them. Looking at a bigger picture opens the mind to wider possibilities, opening up solutions that bring together instead of tear apart.

Invitation

Notes on upcoming show

Over forty works covering two floors of the Gallery at Manor Mill, the show “Phases of Mind”, represents two ways I explore feelings I’m trying to understand reflecting diverse mental states. The pastel drawings on the second floor investigate idea-based moods often triggered by my reading in science and philosophy. I think of these drawings as visual philosophy, an image that shows a set of relationships that can prompt ideas in the viewer. One purpose is to break down fixation on separate objects and shift attention to processes of change and interpenetration, drawing attention to impermanence. The graphite-based drawings on the third floor focus on weight, how it affects attention and conveys seriousness. These are darker moods as the metaphor of heaviness implies. Many of them are also motivated by the desire to have the image push out at the viewer rather than the traditional sense of the picture falling back from a window. The seven drawings in the “Rational Limits” series, six of which were shown at the BMA are a bridge to the socio-political work that formed the rest of that show. They consider the mindsets that detach people from their feelings enough to create division and anxiety in the world. In all off these works, the viewer can go in many directions of their own. I’ve sought an essence that gives form that can prompt a viewers’ thought.

Enactment

Noticing

In a time when the attention of so many is sucked into one small physical location, 21st century research is reminding us of the importance of the rest of our environment to day-to-day well-being. Nature and water have the most restorative qualities. The integration of elements in the natural world includes us when we’re walking through it. In Japan they recommend the benefits of forest bathing, a simple walk in the woods. Noticing what’s out there stimulates the senses and can stir curiosity because nature keeps changing. The clouds are different, the fox or deer or rabbit that runs through a yard is never the same, the edges of the creek vary as does the clarity and depth of the water. A regular suburban neighborhood is an endless stream of information, that when noticed, strengthens our ability to notice more. Any continued involvement in something brings expertise which enables us to see in more detail. Whether it’s studying the needs of the plants in your garden or learning more about the people around you, accumulated observation builds knowledge. Spinoza wrote “The more the mind knows, the better it understands.” Any one area of knowledge improves our base for reasoning about other things, with a range of characteristics, functions and interactions that can be compared to new perceptions, making distinctions where different and correlations where the same. Personal verbal language is enriched with new description and metaphor. This is not quantifiable knowledge. Observed knowledge broadens our base of perception. Everything we learn with our eyes fine tunes our ability to see. Every time I walk with my friend Jordan Tierney, I learn something from her intense ecological awareness of the natural world. I notice more. I contrast this with the memory of a teenager I saw walking in the surf at the beach, his eyes never leaving the screen in his hand which is attached by wires to his ears as well. Our curiosity has been co-opted by our phones, reduced to the choices on the screen- has someone responded to our post or text, do we have voice mail, what is the weather in the next 15 minutes, what’s the trending video. As algorithms and demagogues know, emotion gets attention but never has us question why a feeling attracts us. Art shows what words can’t say, bringing the feeling we couldn’t articulate back to us with real depth. Art can show feelings too subtle and deep for words. When Jordan and I were leaving the reservoir area we saw two buzzards pecking at something dead on the ground. When we were close enough see it was a fawn, horror and sadness were the only words. They couldn’t come close to describing the thickness in my chest. Later she sent me this page in her journal so beautifully exemplifying art’s power to say it for me.

Inside Look

Spectating

“Watching Tennis for Self-Improvement” was my first post inspired by tennis, followed by several over the years rhapsodizing with the admiration I feel whenever I watch a grand slam tournament. Admiration and inspiration are always dominant themes though each post emphasized different facets. I celebrated the breaking down of divisions by players from all over the world demonstrating individualized excellence, so favorites transcend national borders. When the camera focuses on the facial expression, it feels like such an honor to see into the core consciousness and focused hereness exposed on the face. The pleasure of saying “WOW” is pure joy, erupting spontaneously over shots that astonish and seem impossible. Both finals this year provided plenty of that and in the case of the men’s final for almost five hours. Each championship match was historic for different reasons. Marketa Vondrousova was the first ever unranked player to win the championship, beating one of the top ten women, Ons Jabeur. In the men’s final, Novak Djokovic, the record holding champion of the most men’s finals played the current number 1 player Carlos Alcaraz, 20 years old and with very little experience on the grass. Sure to become a legendary match, shots were thoughtful and creative as well as powerful. The spectators were held in thrall, our own attention spans stretched by the drama. We were all one crowd going crazy over the big shots, holding our breath at key moments, and it was the oneness I felt with the crowd this year that got my attention. We shared something special. Whether the camera, which loves fame, was focusing on the King of Spain or Brad Pitt, we were all united in wonder, everyone standing up and cheering with appreciation. Racial and ethnic diversity was evident throughout the stadium and on screens of all sizes all over the world. Boundaries are erased by appreciation. Our shared enjoyment surely produced some wonderful brain chemistry, excitement, energy, pleasure at watching the results of the superlative dedication necessary to achieve such mastery in their skills. The pleasure goes deeper when a player is watching. Experience sharpens observation and my friend Xandi Egginton who was a champion in high school, could tell who each player idolized and how it inspired them. He said, “In tennis it is all laid bare; the game is so diffuse with personality, character, and feeling that these qualities become a part of the fabric of competition, which I think is one of the many reasons tennis is such a special sport.” Dedication is inspiring. The benefits of admiration fed by good examples of heart, courage and discipline were there for all of us as witnesses and though I was watching through a screen it felt like something shared. Tennis has power to keep people in the moment and be more focused witnesses. Something that Alan Watts expressed different ways in different talks is that we are portals through which the universe sees itself. To witness such excellence is to be reminded of what humans can do when they give themselves to something and that we have a choice about where we give our attention when bad examples dominate the news.

Frustration

Meaning

From the beginning there is meaning. In the infant it’s not just perception but also correlation. Recent studies have shown that a nubbed pacifier which has only been in a baby’s mouth will be recognized externally when seen for the first time. One sense easily translates to another. The subsequent choice of a nubbed one over smooth is an early instance of preference attached to how something looked and its familiarity. Life experience accumulates a range of responses to sensation attached to objects and scenes that includes first impressions of preference- rejection, offense, neutrality. Response associations are embedded in how things look by personal experience and shared behavioral patterns basic to our species. We know when someone is about to fall because it’s what we look like if we lose our balance. We feel it in our bodies and might even automatically reach out if they’re close enough to catch. Neurologists have shown that an important part of how we recognize significant others in our life is by the automatic inner preparation that is part of the accustomed pattern of relationship and who has more control in that relationship. Everything we see is fused with a history of how we’ve felt about it. The responses express the meaning. The unconscious sense of absence, that lack of associations, might be the first sensation of difference. Without connections to it, we’re unsure how to respond. Art is a way to extend our range of visual associations through the feeling of the image making a bridge to surface unfamiliarity. We might not know what the specifics mean but if there’s a deeper feeling present, we feel it. By going deeper, we sense the universal. The common human feeling creates connection instead of division. As a sensory experience art reaches that linked core of response where sensation meets feeling, the summary of what something means to us. How we respond begins with this essence which is why experiencing art is so personal. Wherever there is a strong response signals an emotional connection to experience that shares that feeling and builds awareness of the personal emotional climate. Recent neuroscience has shown that art makes linkages throughout the brain which is why programs like VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies) are so successful at improving children’s test scores in all subjects. Looking at art and talking about what they see improves creative use of language and builds circuits that reach from the center out into all associated areas. Description of mood and feelings in a painting create mental patterns that resonate through the senses and are deeply linked creating expectations that form our intuitive response to different visual structures. Art extends our range of meaning.

Out of the Chreode

Re-Legacy

Patterns are everywhere. Visiting with my friend Paula Whaley was sinking into the presence of a woman who has affirmed and appreciated me since I first met her. We were both the on the Medicine Wheel Elder group who met monthly with the Baltimore Youth Ambassadors, a peer-counseling group, to hear their stories and offer advice and encouragement. I appreciated all the different people in the group but felt an immediate resonance with Paula and admired the essential wisdom she brought to every encounter. As we became friends, I learned she was the youngest sister of James Baldwin, a writer I felt like a force of nature, so powerfully could he convey the human heart. Because her father died the day she was born, he and her mother raised her. Our backgrounds couldn’t have been more different, yet we arrived at the same inner image of the world. An artist herself, her dolls expressed a world of feeling that I understand but haven’t experienced in the same way. While we were talking Sunday, I confessed to her that I hadn’t grieved for my mother. I told her I was reading a book by a former child actress called, “I’m Glad My Mom Died”. I’d forgotten about reserving it because when I requested it, there were 109 holds already. That was when she looked shocked. I reminded her of a conversation she once told me about with “Jimmy” and her mother around the kitchen table in their Harlem apartment. She was just a little girl and she asked them why white people were so mean. Her brother answered that it was because white parents didn’t love their children enough. White parents would object, but it may have more to do with definitions of love, particularly of children. White parents often see love as what they think is best for children without appreciating the way the child is. Jennette McDougal’s story is an extreme example of a parent trying to get a child “right” according to their own aspirations. The model fits many mothers I’ve seen in my parent’s and my own generation. I watched many times as they not only set goals for the kids but projected their own attitudes, kids’ own preferences and tendencies not even acknowledged. Disappointment, disapproval, and inadequacy are instilled at an early age as parents worried more about where the child wasn’t measuring up according to doctors, teachers, and themselves. Children are all different and the world would benefit from the range of new ideas that might emerge from their individuality, but channels of choice narrow and opportunities for self-discovery evaporate. Understand, I do not judge my parents. They are agents of the culture and did everything they were supposed to according to the acceptable models they were given. The generational heritage matters. Patterns repeat themselves. Studies on the relationship between child-rearing and the emergence of the Nazi party show that desire for an authoritarian who says they know best repeats the family structure. Frustration at what never had a chance to flourish is projected at the designated enemy. At a time when these kinds of attitudes are emerging again, we need to encourage the change in approach with the growing number of parents who have shifted from a fear-based approach to acceptance, support and love that connects beneath the surface.

Encroachment

Sharing Consciousness

Earth Day is a day to recognize how interconnected with our planet we are, how long the chain of events that brought our food and other physical needs, as well as all the influence of people in our lives and what goes on in our heads. Beyond the support for our physical body are the minds that shaped ours, the person we saw yesterday and the line of thinking that grew from that and any interaction. The idea of being separate is a trick of words. We are the ongoing expression of everything that has been shared with us. Think of the eye of Jupiter, or a place in a stream where the current circles, both holding thei shape as the current flows in taking a shape supported by what’s below. If we think of ourselves as complex patterns of energy, the rocks are placed by genes and caregivers, some burrowing into the mud, others nudged around until a strong current moves them downstream. What flows from upstream can’t be predicted but some of it will lodge in the swirl and some won’t. This image reflects how I think of various groups I’m part of as well as myself as a particular organization of energy that will break down when my body does. Called solitons, the specialized character for each energy swirl last until the supporting structure ends. For the tapestry of human energy fields, groups form and disperse directed by confluence of individual purposes. With every soliton we inhabit we make linkages that persist in the overall field of vibrations from all that has emerged. There is resonance with similar patterns, behaviors and thoughts, finetuning our perception of experience. The interplay of multiple qualities in the flowing overall consciousness is ongoing with everyone affecting everyone else in varying degree as part of a unified field These images free our ideas of consciousness as trapped in our heads, an assumption with no basis and far more evidence to suggest otherwise. Even in the most detached head-centered lifestyle, influence flows in from all sides. We’ve been ensnared by words for too long and they aren’t adequate to describe consciousness. Images are more effective at stimulating new ways of looking at a subject. Images can show the contradictory as complementary, the difference that completes and allows the whole to work. The soliton is just one image for the interweave of consciousness. It provides a set of relationships that stir the viewer’s mind to their own speculations. Artists are best suited to showing alternatives to old mindsets that keep people from feeling part of the universe. Efforts to shift the mechanical view of the universe to an organic growth model are already happening. Artists Alex Grey and Amanda Sage use organic patterns intuiting the webs and pattern of energy that grow in complexity. Even with the sky overhead and the earth beneath our feet holding us secure in its gravity, modern people often lose their sense of connection to nature even as many in medicine are seeing the concrete benefits of nature for relieving stress and prescribing daily doses. Reconnecting to nature personally may be a necessary first step to caring for the planet. The resonance with what grows reminds us we are growing too, are part of the growth of the planet with responsibility toward it.

Encroachment. (in progress)

Art for the Mind and Body

In his recent column in the New York Times, “The Power of Art in a Political Age”, David Brooks’ spoke of art as a balancing power to the ever “shallowization” (his wonderful word) driven by technology, and “politicization of everything”. His column celebrated art’s power to stimulate the depths, feel our feelings and see into the mind of another, enlarging our range of experience. The science supports what he writes. Two new books to support what he writes. How Art can change your life by art historian Susie Hodge emphasizes the emotional connection we make to art. The just released Your Brain on Art is based on neuroscience specifically devoted to how all of the arts are processed and what that reveals about their importance that is the focus of the new science of of neuroaesthetics. The authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross cover all the arts and the sensory structures associated with experiencing them, how the arts improve health and recognition of deeper layers of feeling. The importance of feelings should not be underestimated. New research in neuroscience shows that emotions are the organizing force for all areas of cognition. Brain scans reveal that emotions have interconnections with multiple areas in the brain, demonstrating the breadth of their influence. As an indicator of how much something matters, emotions are a register of what we care about and how much. That extra concern is what shows in the emotional signals picked up by lie detectors. All emotions are laced with personal significance. Being able to recognize emotions is key to best use of the mind. Otherwise, they can run the show. Art is an outstanding tool for building the capacity to see what you’re feeling. What we’re drawn to in art shows something about the current state of our feelings that we might not have noticed. The thoughts that arise could add important information about unrecognized underlying feelings. Those shadow feelings, hiding in the depths, need to be put somewhere. Life on the technological surface puts too much emphasis on the surface differences, the labels, and categories that translate easily into posts. Social media becomes a habit, even an obligation. Personal feelings not consciously acknowledged are projected onto an easily identified target. More awareness of the feelings below the surface would allow empathy to surface. Connecting to art, music and performance of all kinds resonates in a place without surfaces. Art can soften the rigid boundaries of too much reliance on the separating effects of words. What seems very different on the surface can touch the heart and show how artificial the surface distinctions are. Art connects to the deepest part of us.

Tendencies

Considering Consciousness

“The universe appears as a single undivided whole whose patterns and forms emerge out of a ground, are sustained for a time, and then die back into the field. Consciousness, too, can be considered to arise out of a deeper ground that is common to both matter and mind.” Physicist David Peat As much as scientists have learned about the brain, they don’t know where to look when it comes to consciousness. The underlying perspective on reality matters. This is the starting model for building how we think, an armature to structure our ideas. If our starting model is based on machines, looking at everything as an organization of small parts, consciousness is expected to be found somewhere in the parts. But what if it isn’t? They are just the particles. It’s time to consider the wave nature of reality. David Bohm suggested that a more accurate way of approaching the universe would be as a continuous field. Connected within a field of consciousness, individuals might be like sense organs adding our knowledge and perspective within a larger consciousness that likewise influences each individual. An image that takes the wave nature into account might help us see beyond the limits of the machine model and open new ground for speculation. Just like science fiction can anticipate and inspire scientific investigation, there are many artists who are trying to include this interconnectedness in images of webs and networks that suggest what has influence but can’t be seen. How we might be embedded in intelligence that includes but goes beyond our own is an idea that cannot be properly communicated in words. Words can be the finger pointing to the moon, not the moon itself. Art is not the moon either but is a portal that allows insight to develop that stimulates a deeper sense of the possible. Different modes of organization, relationship, and influence could be visualized more easily than described. We might be neural nodes of a universal mind, local inputs participating in an overall awareness, threads within a larger tapestry of mind. The Net of Indra is a beautiful image from Buddhism tracing back to Hindu that envisions cosmic unity and our interconnectedness as a net of reflective jewels, each of which reflect the whole and are reflected in all the others. There are many wonderful artists’ conceptions of this on the Internet. The net metaphor pervades the modern world, so it feels natural to the reality of being in a web of information. Looking at the natural order and enlarging the metaphors to include fields of influence and repeating patterns could illuminate new possibilities.

Quickening

Finding Direction

In “The Sorrows of Young Werther” Goethe expresses the “the unbearable burden of aimlessness”. He’s harsh on the people he judges, who just make the choices given by their culture. We are each born into a web of expectation created by immediate caregivers, and the growing circle of people as our sphere of experience grows. Media and culture also tell us how to be. Sorting out what really matters can be hard. The currents of what’s always happened make the decisions. And if aimlessness is bad then having an aim would be an equivalent good, a direction. One of the tenets of chaos theory is that that chaos combined with direction produces complexity. Michael Faraday, writing to a young student who wanted to know where to start to go into science said to start anywhere, he’ll get to everything he needs eventually. This accords with ancient wisdom. The I Ching often advises having somewhere to go. A purpose is a direction. Once a personal direction is chosen, we know what to do with our time. Margo Jefferson’s book “Constructing a Nervous System” is not a scientific account of it like I originally thought, but better. Her book provided an example of how we build our minds from the things we connect to emotionally. Following our heart interest is how we find direction. Hers is an emotional history, first memory the fascination with the close-up of Bud Powell’s face on the cover of his album when she was nine years old. From there, curiosity brewed a network of connections to his music and his story. Her memories accumulated the artists who moved her. In each of the stages of her life it was the emotional depth reached by artists that articulated the inner self and paved the way for the next place to grow. The fascination with different musicians as she grew older invented an area of expertise that could, once an adult, be a profession, writing about musicians and writers. Whether it’s music, literature, theatre, dance, or visual art, when art leads, we gain access to more of ourselves. The book “The First Idea” describes how “PET scans show that emotionally meaningful experiences are associated with many areas of the brain at the same time in comparison with impersonal tasks.” The more richly interconnected brain is more resilient, has more routes to get around if it starts losing the less used ones. To include the feeling in the idea feels more accurate to mental life. As the authors say in “The First Idea”, emotions “coordinate and orchestrate the rest of cognitive abilities. Each of us can do this. After reading the book I traced my route through my father’s Ella Fitzgerald and Rhapsody in Blue records to Led Zeppelin and the Doors. These were my soundtrack to Tanguy, Escher, Kay Sage, and Judy Chicago. Thinking about the last two I realize how much influence they have on my work now. The wide mesh of circuitry created by our path through the arts shows personal choices and can guide future direction.